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Comment by brightstep | Hacker News Reader

Unions reduce profits by giving employees a voice to protect themselves, demand the compensation they deserve, etc. It's therefore inevitable that corporations (Google, FAANG, or any others) will try to preempt or destroy them. It is their duty to shareholders.

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It's a common trope to say it's their duty to shareholders, but it's not. Their duty is to be diligent and transparent to their shareholders, but not to pursue short-term profits at any and all costs no matter what. Specifically, there is no legal requirement or duty for companies to be anti-union.

You're technically right, but don't the mechanisms strongly encourage it?

This is downvoted, I assume because people are maybe disagreeing with the principle rather than the validity of what you said.

A lot of large companies clearly do look at unions as something that forces them to pay more compensation for less work, which they'd have to justify to shareholders and the board. Even if the board would be cool with it, and they could make it fly with shareholders, leadership bonuses and stock grants are tied to performance. I really don't see where this is an incorrect statement to make.

"It is their duty to shareholders" is a factually-incorrect statement.[0] That piece of misinformation needs to die out.

0. https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/8146/are-u-s-co...

Is it factually incorrect, though?

They may not have a legal duty to maximise profits, but investors will expect them to do so - and negative reactions in the stock price would be expected if they were to support unionisation within their business, as it would (rightly or wrongly) be expected to reduce profits going forward.

Boards don't like unhappy shareholders.

I'm not defending an anti-union stance - I'm simply saying that company leads will most certainly see it as a threat to their job if they are unable to increase profits or keep margins fat in perpetuity.

The highlighted explanation in your link supports this assertion.

I downvoted because it brings up this pointless trope of "duty to shareholders", as do you. The reality is that company officers have nearly limitless latitude to make strategic decisions as they see fit.

You may be technically correct if we want to get pedantic, the observed reality supports my conclusion.

Germany offers an example of unions that work with the rest of corporate leadership to maintain the health of corporate fiscal flows and labor pools among the other concerns they attenuate to.

This reads to me like characatures used to construct a straw person argument. Your inevitability decoration is denied by observable fact.

No one in their right mind would rather work for a german software company in a union than work for an american one without a union.

EDIT: Hyperbole here, and it was lost on some. Despite unions in germany, German companies are exploiting their workers compared to lucrative salaries that non union US software engineers are enjoying. The gap beteween the lifestyle of a german software engineer and a US one is quite large.

I would and I am sane of mind.

30 days' vacation (24 by law, the extra 6 were because effective union), so much sick leave that I don't know anyone who exhausted it with anything less than a long term disability, and extremely strong employee protections once you're past an initial 6 month trial period, as well as amazing parental leave/part-time policies enshrined in the law, backed up by sector-wide unions and company Betriebsrat (Works Council).

All helps keep me sane, anyway.

Ok so most SWEs in the US get 25 days of vacation and make what, 4x what the average SWE in germany makes?

Please explain. It seems you harbor assumptions as to the context in which right minds are making their decisions.

Perhaps a German citizen living in Germany with young children that is supported by local family; "only" speaks German, Afrikaans, and Chinese; and is independently wealthy but enjoys writing software might disagree.

I know that since I dramatically changed my contexts the way I look at roles changed dramatically.

Thankfully there are countries where whatever corporations think is against union law.

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